The company has also released a full-featured new version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 (called Visual Studio Community 2013) for free for developers, students and institutions that don't make enterprise apps. Additionally, Microsoft says that it will open-source the .NET framework to ensure it is leveraged by a broader set of developers. The company will also expand the open-source .NET framework to run on Linux and Mac OS X.
"Today, we are taking the next big step for the Microsoft developer platform, opening up access to .NET and Visual Studio to an even broader set of developers by beginning the process of open-sourcing the full .NET server core stack and introducing a new free and fully-featured edition of Visual Studio. At the same time, we are releasing previews of the next generation of Visual Studio, .NET and Visual Studio Online," noted S.Somasegar, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft's Developer Division.
The Preview release of Visual Studio 2015 is now available from Microsoft's download centre. The Redmond giant has opened up the platform with for developers with Visual Studio 2015 support for cross-platform mobile development (e.g. like Android, iOS) and cloud-based development.
Microsoft says that with the free Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2013, developers get the full Visual Studio extensibility ecosystem and support to be able to target any platform, from devices and desktop to web and cloud services. The company is also offering Microsoft Azure free trial that provides hosting for 10 websites and 10 mobile services. The Visual Studio Online will offer developer services free for up to 5 users.
Developers can register for all three offers starting Wednesday.
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